Yep. Lies are not the same thing as being dishonest.
You can use lies to be misleading, or manipulative, or dishonest but you don't need to, and it's usually more effective if you don't (or at least don't entirely).
If someone can't see how a person could be misleading without lying they're going to fall for a lot of bullshit.
Do we? Human beings tell half-truths and lies pretty frequently. I bet if you examine the history of your own utterances for the past several years. you'd find that you do, too.
There are obviously different scales of truth-telling and deception. "It's your baby." is a lot different than, "Ah - I can't make it. I'm just too tired!" But it's still lying. In fact human lying is so frequent that a lot of the smaller lies we tell to be polite or avoid hurting feelings barely even register as lies, even though that's what they are, plain and simple. Clearly Kant's maxim that lying is permissible under no circumstances is false.
In business lying is rampant. You are competing with liars. Marketing is institutionalized lying. People are constantly embellishing the features of their product so that it purports to do something magical when on closer inspection most features are much more mundane. Sales is even more about convincing the person you're talking to that they can't live without something they probably can live without. In other words, being a good liar is pretty much a qualification for the position.
Does that make it ok? No. But does it mean our expectations are lowered? Yes. So when someone goes out of their way to come clean and tell the truth at great disadvantage to themselves, especially in business, we should recognize that for the exceptional event that it is. I don't think that makes lying more acceptable - but it incentivizes truth-telling.
Plenty of people lie, often unnecessarily, about tiny things like making excuses for being late but would not lie to cover up anything that has serious ethical implications.
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